Church and State - Karl Barth

CHURCH AND
STATE

BY

KARL BARTH

TRANSLATED BY

G, RONALD HOWE

STUDENT CH 'OvFA-'F.T N

58 Blgomsbu. ^ikeet, London, W.^. a

First Published May, 1939

Distributed in Canada by our exclusive agents
The Maanillan Company of Canada Ltd,,
70 Bond Street, Toronto

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LTD.,
LONDON AND BECCLES

CONTENTS
chap. page
Introduction ..... i

I. The Church and the State as they Con-

front One Another . . .13

II. The Essence of the State . . .23

III. The Significance of the State for the

Church 37

IV. The Service which the Church Owes

to the State . . . .62

PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD

The original German edition of this booklet is published
under the title of Rechtfertigung und Kecht (Justification
and Justice) as Volume I of the Theologischen Studien by
the Evangelische Buchhandlung, Zollikon, Switzerland.

We should like to express our gratitude to Miss Olive
Wyon for valuable assistance in the revision of the trans-
lation.

For convenience the Notes are printed together at the
end.

THE title ^Justification and Justice' 9
indicates the question with which I am
dealing in this work.

First of all, I will state the question thus:
Is there a connection between the justification
of the sinner through faith alone, completed
once for all by God through Jesus Christ, and
the problem of justice, the problem of human
law? Is there an inward and vital connection
by means of which in any sense human justice
(or law), as well as divine justification, becomes
a concern of Christian faith and Christian
responsibility, and therefore also a matter
which concerns the Christian Church? But
we may clearly ask the same question with refer-
ence to other conceptions; take the problem
of order, for instance, of that order which is no
longer, or not yet, the Order of the Kingdom
of God; or the problem of peace, which is no
longer, or not yet, the eternal Peace of God;
or the problem of freedom, which is no longer,
or not yet, the freedom of the Children of God

2

CHURCH AND STATE

— do all these problems belong to the realm of
the "new creation" of Man through the Word
of God, do they all belong to his sanctification
through the Spirit? Is there, in spite of all
differences, an inner and vital connection be-
tween the service of God in Christian living
indicated in James i. 27 and what we are
accustomed to call "Divine Service 5 ' in the
worship of the Church as such, and another
form of service, what may be described as a
' 'political' ' service of God, a service of God
which, in general terms, would consist in the
careful examination of all those problems which
are raised by the existence of human justice,
of law, or, rather, which would consist in the
recognition, support, defence and extension of
this law — and all this, not in spite of but
because of divine justification? In what sense
can we, may we and* must we follow Zwingli,
who, in order to distinguish them and yet to
unite them, speaks in the same breath of
' 'divine and human justice' ' ?

It should be noted that the interest in this
question begins where the interest in the
Reformation confessional writings and Refor-

CHURCH AND STATE 3

mation theology as a whole ceases, or rather, to
put it more exactly, where it begins to fade (1).
The fact that both realities exist: divine justi-
fication and human justice, the proclamation of
Jesus Christ, faith in Him and the office and
authority of the secular power, the mission of
the Church and the mission of the State, the
hidden life of the Christian in God and also his
duty as a citizen — all this has been clearly and
powerfully emphasized for us by the Reformers.
And they also took great pains to make it clear
that the two are not in conflict, but that they
can very well exist side by side, each being
competent in its own sphere. But it must be
strongly emphasized that on this point they do
not by any means tell us all that we might have
expected — not excepting Luther in his work
Of Worldly Authority of 15-23 or Calvin in the
majestic closing chapters of 'his Institution Clearly
we need to know not only that the two are not
in conflict, but, first and foremost, to what
extent they are connected. To this question,
the question as to the relationship between that
which they maintained here (with the greatest
polemical emphasis), and the centre of their

4 CHURCH AND STATE

Christian message, we receive from the Re-
formers either no answer at all, or, at the best,
a very inadequate answer. Whatever our atti-
tude may be to the content of that last chapter
of the Institution "De Volitica Administratione "
(and, so far as we are concerned, we are pre-
pared to take a very positive position), this at
least is clear, that as we look back on the earlier
parts of the work, and in particular on the
second and third books and their cardinal
statements about Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit,
sin and grace, faith and repentance, we feel
like a traveller, suddenly transported to a
distant land, who is looking back at the country
from which he started. For on the question
of how far the politica administratio in the title
of the fourth book belongs to the externis mediis
vel adminiculis quibus Deus in Christi societatem
nos invitat et in ea retinet we shall find only the
most scattered instruction, for all the richness
which the book otherwise contains. But the
same is true of the corresponding theses of
Luther and Zwingli, and of those of the Lutheran
and Reformed Confessional writings. That
authority and law rest on a particular ordinatio

CHURCH AND STATE $

of divine providence, necessary on account of
unconquered sin, serving to protect humanity
from the most concrete expressions and con-
sequences of that sin, and thus to be accepted
by humanity with gratitude and honour — these
are certainly true and biblical thoughts, but
they are not enough to make clear the relation-
ship between this issue and the other, which
the Reformation held to be the decisive and
final issue of faith and confession. What does
Calvin mean when, on the one hand, he assures
us: "spirituale Christi regnum et civilem ordina-
tionem res esse plurimum sepositas" (2) — and on
the other hand twice (3) points to the subjec-
tion of all earthly rulers to Christ, indicated in the
passage, Psalms ii. iofif., and describes the ideal
outcome of that divine ordinatio as the politic
Christiana? (4) How far Christiana? What
has Christ to do with this "matter? we ask, and
we are left without any real answer, as though a
particular ruling of a general, somewhat anony-
mous Providence were here the last word.
And if we read Zwingli's strong statement, ($)
that the secular power has * 'strength and
assurance from the teaching and action of

6

CHURCH AND STATE

Christ, 5 ' the disappointing explanation of this
statement consists only in the fact that in
Matthew xxii. 2 1 Christ ordained that we should
render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's
and unto God the things which are God's, and
that by paying the customary "tribute money"
(Didrachmon; Matt. xvii. 24f.) he himself con-
firmed this teaching. That is again quite true
in itself, (6) but, when stated thus apart from
its context, in spite of the appeal to the text of
the Gospel, it is based not on the Gospel but on
the Law.

We can neither overlook nor take lightly
this gap in the teaching that we have received
from the fathers of our church — the lack of a
gospel-foundation, that is to say, in the strictest
sense, of a Christological foundation, for this
part of their creed. There is, of course, no
question that here too they only wished to
expound the teaching of the Bible. But the
question remains: in introducing these biblical
data into their creed, were they regulating
their teaching by the standard which elsewhere
they considered final? That is, were they
founding law on justice or justification? political

CHURCH AND STATE J

power on the power of Christ? Or were they
not secretly building on another foundation,
and, in so doing, in spite of all their apparent
fidelity to the Bible, were they not actually
either ignoring or misconstruing the funda-
mental truth of the Bible?

Let us consider what would happen if that
were so : if the thought of human justice were
merely clamped on to the truth of divine
justification, instead of being vitally connected
with it. On the one hand, to a certain extent
it would be possible to purify the truth of
divine justification from this foreign addition,
and to build upon it a highly spiritual message
and a very spiritual Church, which would
claim to expect "everything from God," in a
most devout spirit, and yet, in actual fact,
would dispute this "everything" because, by
their exclusive emphasis uf)on the Kingdom of
God, forgiveness of sins and sanctification, they
had ceased to seek or find any entrance into the
sphere of these problems of human justice.
On the other hand, it would be possible to
consider the question of human law very
seriously (still, perhaps, in relation to the

8

CHURCH AND STATE

general divine providence, but freed from the
Reformers' juxtaposition of human justice and
divine justification) and to construct a secular
gospel of human law and a secular church, in
which, in spite of emphatic references to
"God," it would inevitably become clear that
this Deity is not the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and that the human justice which is
proclaimed is in no sense the Justice of God.
Since the Reformation it is evident that these
two possibilities — and with them Pietistic
sterility on one hand, and the sterility of the
Enlightenment on the other — have been realized
in many spheres. But it cannot be denied that
there is a connection between this fact and that
gap in the Reformers' teaching.

And now we live to-day at a time when, in
the realm of the Church the question of divine
justification, and in die realm of the State (lit. :
political life), the question of human law, are
being raised with new emphasis, and we seem,
now as then, to be pressing onward towards
developments that cannot yet be foreseen. It
is obvious to recall that both justification and
justice, or the Kingdom of Christ and the

CHURCH AND STATE 9

kingdoms of this world, or the Church and the
State, formerly stood side by side in the
Reformation confession, and that by "worship
in spirit and in truth* ' the Reformers under-
stood a life in both these realms. But if we
are not once more to drift into sterile and
dangerous separations, it will not be enough
to recollect the Reformation, to repeat the
formulae in which it placed the two realms
side by side, to recite over and again (with
more or less historical accuracy and sym-
pathetic feeling) "the Reformed conception of
the State" and the like, as though that gap were
not evident, as though the Reformation teaching
did not, with that gap, bear within itself the
temptation to those separations. If the inten-
sity of our present situation is to be our salva-
tion and not our ruin, then the question which
we asked at the outset must be put: Is there
an actual, and therefore inward and vital,
connection between the two realms?

What is offered here is a study — a biblical,
or more exactly, a New Testament study — for
the answer to this question. For the dubious
character of the Reformation solution is

IO CHURCH AND STATE

decidedly due to the questionable character of
the authoritative scriptural arguments on this
subject presented at that time. If we are to
progress further to-day, we must at all costs
go back to the Scriptures. This pamphlet
represents a partial attempt in this direc-
tion (7).

I shall begin by reproducing in a few sentences
what is, as far as I can see, the latest important
statement of theological thought upon this sub-
ject: the work presented on our theme by
K. L. Schmidt in his Basle inaugural lecture of
December 2, 1936, under the title, "The
Conflict of Church and State in the New
Testament Community' 5 (8). The fundamental
teaching of the Church on her relation to the
State is "the harsh picture of the execution of
Jesus Christ by the officials of the State."
What is this State?-* It is one of those angelic
powers (ifjpvcriai) of this age, which is
always threatened by "demonization, M that is,
by the temptation of making itself an absolute;
And, over against this State, what is the
Church ? It is the actual community (TroXireu/xa)
of the new Heaven and the new Earth, as such

CHURCH AND STATE

here and now certainly still hidden, and there-
fore in the realm of the State a foreign com-
munity (TrapoLKta). But the solidarity of
distress and death unites Christians with all
men, and so also with those who wield political
power. Even though the Church prefers to
suffer persecution at the hands of the State,
which has become a w beast out of the pit of the
abyss," rather than take part in the deification
of Ccesar, yet it still knows that it is responsible
for the State and for Caesar, and it finally
manifests this responsibility, "the prophetic
service of the Church as Watchman, 5 ' in its
highest form by praying for the State and for
its officials in all circumstances.

Schmidt's presentation is explicitly confined
to one section only of the problem of the
"Church and State in the New Testament/'
namely, with the question <that appears to be
directly opposed to ours: the question of the
conflict between the two realms. But it seems
to me important to determine that even in this
other aspect of the problem, investigation of
the New Testament inevitably reveals a whole
series of view-points which are of the highest

2

12

CHURCH AND STATE

importance for the answer to our question
about the positive connection between the two
realms. This is so clear, that in what follows
I shall confine myself simply to the order traced
by Schmidt.

I

THE CHURCH AND THE STATE AS THEY
CONFRONT ONE ANOTHER

I TOO consider it right and important to point
first of all to the situation in which Jesus and
Pilate confront one another. So far as I can see,
the Reformation writers in their teaching about
Church and State, among all the somewhat
significant Gospel texts that are concerned with
this encounter, were interested only in the
words of John xviii. 36: "My Kingdom is not
of this world." Their thoughts about the
Electoral Prince of Saxony or the Council of
Zurich or Geneva would clfearly have been dis-
turbed, had they concentrated intensively upon
the person of Pilate. But did the Reformers
see clearly at this point? Is a " disturbance* '
all that can be expected? Might they not
perhaps have found here a better foundation for

what they wished to say on this matter? Here,

13

14 CHURCH AND STATE

at any rate, we must try to fill up the gap which
they have left (9).

In point of fact, in this encounter two points
stand out with an almost blinding clarity: the
State, in its " demonic' ' form, and thus its
authority as the ' 'power of the present age,"
on the one hand; the homelessness of the
Church in this age, on the other hand. If the
4 'rulers (10) of this world" had recognized the
wisdom of God, which "we," the apostles,
speak to the perfect, then "they would not
have crucified the Lord of Glory" (1 Cor. ii.
6f.). There they showed that they did not
recognize the wisdom of God. But the teaching
on the separation between Church and State
was not, and is not, the only teaching which
the Church may glean from the passages con-
cerned with the encounter between Jesus and
Pilate.

I turn next to John xix. 1 1 ; here Jesus ex-
pressly confirms Pilate's claim to have "power"
over Him, and not, indeed, an accidental or
presumptuous power, but one given to him
"from above" (11). And this power is in no
sense in itself, and as such, a power of the Evil

CHURCH AND STATE l£

One, of enmity to Jesus and His claims.
Pilate himself formulated the matter thus in the
previous verse (10): "I have power to release
thee and power to crucify thee.' 5 As power
given by God, it could be used either way
towards Jesus without losing its divine charac-
ter. Certainly, had Jesus been released by
Pilate, that would not have meant that the claim
of Jesus to be King would have been recognized.
Who for this end was born, and for this end
came into the world, that He should bear wit-
ness to the truth (John xviii. 37). Such "recog-
nition 1 ' cannot be and is not Pilate's business.
To the question of truth, the State is neutral.
"What is truth ?" But the release of Jesus,
and with it the recognition by the "rulers of
this world 5 ' of the wisdom of God, might
have meant the possibility of proclaiming openly
the claim of Jesus to be Such a king; or, in
other words, it would have meant the legal
granting of the right to preach justification!
Now Pilate did not release Jesus. He used his
powel- to crucify Jesus. Yet Jesus expressly
acknowledged that even so his power was given
him by God. Did He thereby, in the mind of

1 6 CHURCH AND STATE

the evangelist, subject Himself to the will and
the verdict of a general divine providence ? Or
does the evangelist mean that in the use Pilate
made of his power, instead of giving a just
judgment, actually, under the cloak of legality,
he allowed injustice to run its course? Was
the one thing, or at least the chief thing, he
wanted to emphasize here: that the State, by
this decision, turned against the Church?

No ; what he means is that what actually took
place in this use of the statesman's power was
the only possible thing that could take place in
the fulfilment of the gracious will of the
Father of Jesus Christ! Even at the moment
when Pilate (still in the garb of justice! and in
the exercise of the power given him by God)
allowed injustice to run its course, he was the
human created instrument of that justification
of sinful man that was completed once for all
time through that very crucifixion.

Consider the obvious significance of the
whole process in the light of the Pauline mes-
sage: when Pilate takes Jesus from the hands
of the Jews in order to have Him scourged and
crucified, he is, so to say, the middleman who

CHURCH AND STATE I J

takes Him over in the name of paganism, who in
so doing declares the solidarity of paganism with
the sin of Israel, but in so doing also enters into
the inheritance of the promise made to Israel.
What would be the worth of all the legal
protection which the State could and should
have granted the Church at that moment, com-
pared with this act in which, humanly speaking,
the Roman governor became the virtual founder
of the Church? Was not this claim confirmed,
for example, in the testimony of the centurion
at the Cross (Mk. xv. 39) which anticipates all
the creeds of Christendom ? Then there is
another truth which the Church might also
gather from the meeting of Jesus and Pilate:
namely, the very State which is "demonic"
may will evil, and yet, in an outstanding way,
may be constrained to do good. The State,
even in this "demonic" ^form, cannot help
rendering the service it is meant to render.
It can no more evade it in the incident recorded
by Luke xiii. where the same Pilate, the
murderer of young Galileans, becomes at the
same time the instrument of the call to repent-
ance, in the same way as the — equally

1 8 CHURCH AND STATE

murderous — Tower of Siloam. This is why the
State cannot lose the honour that is its due.
For that very reason the New Testament
ordains that in all circumstances honour must
be shown to its representatives (Rom. xiii. i~8;
i Pet. ii. 17).

The synoptic accounts of the Barabbas-episode
point in the same direction. What is Pilate
doing when he releases the ' 'notable 5 ' Barabbas,
cast into ' 'prison for insurrection and murder,"
but delivers 41 to scourging and crucifixion"
the Jesus whom he has himself declared to
be guiltless? For all our amazement at such
justice, we may not overlook the fact that in
that very act of the political authority, not one
of the earliest readers of the Gospels could
think of anything other than that act of God,
in which He ' 'made Him to be sin for us, who
knew no sin, that- we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. v. 21).
What is this extremely unjust human judge
doing at this point? In an eminent and direct
way he is fulfilling the word of the supremely
just Divine Judge. Where would the Church
be if this released Barabbas were in the place of

CHURCH AND STATE 1 9

the guiltless Jesus? if, that is, there had been
no "demonic" State?

Finally, there is one other point in the pas-
sages referring to Pilate which must not be
overlooked: Jesus was not condemned as an
enemy of the State, as the "King of the Jews*'
— although, according to Matthew xxvii. 1 1 ;
Mark xv. 2 He acknowledged Himself to be a
king (12). Strictly speaking, Jesus was never
condemned at all. All four evangelists vie
with one another in contending that Pilate
declared Him innocent, that he regarded Him
as "a just man" (Matt, xxvii. 19-24; Mk.
xv. 14; Lk. xxiii. 14, 14-, 22; John xviii. 38;
xix. 4, 6) (13). Here too the connection with
justification now becomes clear: this same
Pilate, constrained to become the instrument of
the death of Jesus, ordained by God for the
justification of sinful man— this same Pilate is
also forced to confirm the presupposition of
this event: to affirm expressly and openly the
innocence of Christ, and — of course — it is in
this very fact that he is fulfilling his specific
function. "Pilate sought to release Him"
(John xix. 12). For it is in this sentence of

2o

CHURCH AND STATE

acquittal (which he did not pronounce), that
his duty lies. If he had done so the State would
have shown its true face. Had it really done so,
then acquittal would have had to follow, and
the State would have had to grant legal protec-
tion to the Church! The fact that this did not
actually happen is clearly regarded hy the
Evangelists as a deviation from the line of duty
on the part of Pilate, as a failure on the part of
the State. Pilate ' 'delivered' 5 Jesus to cruci-
fixion, because he wished to satisfy the people
(Mk. xv. i^). The ' political charge against
Jesus was for Pilate clearly groundless, but he
"gave sentence that it should be as they
required' 1 (Luke xxiii. 24). 4 'Take je him
and crucify him!" (John xix. 6). This de-
cision has nothing to do with the law of the
State nor with the administration of justice.
The Jews themselves confirmed this: "We
have a law and by our law he ought to die ,?
(John xix. 7). It was not in accordance with
the law of the State, but in spite of this law, and
in accordance with a totally different law, and in
flagrant defiance of justice, that Jesus had to
die. "YE, the Jews, have killed Jesus!" is

CHURCH AND STATE

21

the cry throughout the New Testament, with
the exception of i Cor. ii. 8 ; (Acts ii. 23;
iii. i^; vii. £2; 1 Thess. ii. ij). In this
encounter of Pilate and Jesus the "demonic"
State does not assert itself too much but too
little ; it is a State which at the decisive moment
fails to be true to itself. Is the State here an
absolute? If only Pilate had taken himself
absolutely seriously as a representative of the
State he would have made a different use of his
power. Yet the fact that he used it as he did
could not alter the fact that this power was
really given him "from above." But he could
not use it as he did without contradicting his
true function; under the cloak of legality he
trampled on the law which he should have
upheld; in so doing, however, it became
evident that if he had been true to his com-
mission he would have had ta decide otherwise.
Certainly, in deflecting the course of justice he
became the involuntary agent and herald of
divine justification, yet at the same time he
makes it clear that real human justice, a real
exposure of the true face of the State, would
inevitably have meant the recognition of the

22

CHURCH AND STATE

right to proclaim divine justification, the King-
dom of Christ which is not of this world, freely
and deliberately.

We must not again lose sight of this doubly
positive determination of the encounter between
these two realms, as it has emerged in this
critical instance. Particularly in considering
this most critical instance we cannot say that the
legal administration of the State "has nothing
to do with the order of Redemption" ; that
here we have been moving in the realm of the
first and not of the second article of the
Creed (14). No, Pontius Pilate now belongs
not only to the Creed, but to its second article
in particular!

n

THE ESSENCE OF THE STATE

TURNING to the exegesis of the passage
Romans xiii. 1-7, which has been so much
studied in every age, it may be thought peculiar
that although an ancient explanation mentioned
by Irenaeus (ig) was clearly not generally
accepted, yet in recent years fresh emphasis
has been laid (16) on the fact that the word
kgovo-tai which is used by Paul in verse 1 , and
in Titus iii. 1 and also by Luke, to indicate
political authority, is used throughout the rest
of the New Testament, wherever it appears, in
the plural (or in the singular with naa-a)
(1 Cor. xv. 24; CoL i. 16; ii. 10, is; Eph. i.
21; iii. 10; vi. 12; 1 Pet. iii. 22) to indicate
a group of those angelic powers which are so
characteristic of the Biblical conception of the
world and of man. efovo-uu, like ap^aC or
ap^ovTes, Suva/ieis, dp6voi 9 KvpioTTjTes, ayyeXot,

23

24 CHURCH AND STATE

etc., and all these entities which are so difficult
to distinguish (probably they should all be - in-
cluded under the comprehensive heading ayyeW)
constitute created, but invisible, spiritual and
heavenly powers, which exercise, in and above
the rest of creation, a certain independence, and
in this independence have a certain superior
dignity, task, and function, and exert a certain
real influence.

The researches of G. Dehn strengthen the
already strong probability which arises from
the language itself, that when the Church of
the New Testament spoke of the State, the
emperor or king, and of his representatives and
their activities, it had in mind the picture of an
''angelic power" of this kind, represented by
this State and active within it. We have already
met the concept igovata in the singular as
indicating the power given to Pilate, to crucify
Jesus or to release Him. Similarly, the
concept apxovTts (i Cor. ii. 8) is certainly
intended to designate the State — and an angelic
power (17). What does this mean? It has
been rightly maintained (18) that this explains
how it came to pass that the State, from being

CHURCH AND STATE 2£

the defender of the law, established by God's
will and ordinance, could become * 'the beast out
of the abyss" of Revelation xiii. (19), dominated
by the Dragon, demanding the worship of
Caesar, making war on the Saints, blaspheming
God, conquering the entire world. An angelic
power may indeed become wild, degenerate,
perverted, and so become a "demonic" power.
That, clearly, had happened with the State as
represented by Pilate which crucified Jesus.
When Paul warns the Colossian Christians
against the seductions of these angelic powers
which have become "demonic," against a
"worshipping of angels" (Col. ii. 18), when
he exhorts them to strive not with flesh and
blood but with principalities and powers, with
"rulers of the darkness of this world" (Ephes.
vi. 12), when he comforts them by the assur-
ance that these "powers" ^cannot separate us
from the love of Christ (Rom. viii. 38f.) (20),
and when he gives the vision of their ultimate
"deliverance" through Christ in His Parousia
(1 Cor. xv. 24) — all this may have a more or less
direct bearing upon the "demons" and the
"demonic" forces in the political sphere.

26

CHURCH AND STATE

But the last passage which was quoted also
contains a warning. When the separation
between Christ and the State has been estab-
lished, the last word on the vision of the "beast
out of the abyss" has not been said. I think it
is dangerous to translate the word Karapyeiv
in i Corinthians xv. 24 as * 'annihilate' ' —
however clearly it bears that meaning in
other passages. For immediately afterwards,
in verse 2£, the passage runs: "He must reign
till He hath put all His enemies under His feet"
— that is, till He has sovereign power over
them. But that is also the image used in
Philippians ii. — "Wherefore God also hath
highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which
is above.every name ; that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, of things in Heaven and
things in earth and things under the earth 5 ' ; in
Ephesians i. 20, 21 — "He set Him at His own
right hand in the heavenly places far above all
principality and power and might . . in
1 Peter iii. 22 — "Who is gone into heaven and
is on the right hand of God; angels and
authorities and powers being made subject unto
Him. 55 The same image, too, is used in that

CHURCH AND STATE 2 7

particularly striking passage: Colossians ii. 15:
" Having spoiled principalities and powers, He
made a show of them openly, triumphing over
them in it." The destiny of the rebellious
angelic powers which is made clear in Christ's
resurrection and parousia is not that they will
be annihilated, but that they will be forced into
the service and the glorification of Christ, and
through Him, of God. And both the begin-
ning and the middle of their story also corre-
spond to this ultimate destiny. I fail to see
how one can say (21) without further ado that
they simply represent "the world which lives
on itself and by itself and as such is the antipodes
and exact opposite of the creation": "In them
the solitary world arises . 1 5 According to Colos-
sians i. i £ it is rather the case that they have been
created in the Son of God as in the image of
the invisible God, by Him <fnd unto Him, and
further, according to Col. ii. 10, that in Him
they have their Head. From the first, then,
they do not belong to themselves. From the
first they stand at the disposal of Jesus Christ.
To them too His work is relevant: "He was
seen of angels" (i Tim, iii, 16). The outcome
3

28

CHURCH AND STATE

of St, Paul's preaching to the heathen is that
through the existence of the Church, the
1 'manifold wisdom of God" (22) might be
made known unto them (Eph. iii. 10). With
the Church they too desire to gaze into the
mystery of the salvation which is to be revealed
in the future (1 Pet. i. 12). And they are
present not only as spectators ; for them too the
peace won by the crucifixion of Christ (Col. i.
20) and the amKe<£a\aiWis (Eph. i. 10) are
in both passages related both to earth and
to heaven. We should note that here there is
no question of any justification of the ' 'demons' '
and the ' 'demonic" forces; nor is the function
of Christ concerning the angelic powers directly
connected with divine justification. But it
seems to have some connection with human
justice. For what seems to be meant here is
that in Christ the angelic powers are called to
order and, so far as they need it, they are
restored to their original order. Therefore
any further rebellion in this realm can, in
principle, only take place in accordance with
their creation, and within Christ's order, in
the form of unwilling service to the Kingdom

CHURCH AND STATE 29

of Christ, until even that rebellion, within the
boundaries of the Kingdom of Christ, is broken
down in His Resurrection and Parousia. At
the present time, in the period bounded by the
Resurrection and the Parousia, there is no
further rebellion of the heavenly powers ; no
longer can they escape from their original
order.

What follows when all this is applied to the
political angelic power? Clearly this: that
that power, the State as such, belongs originally
and ultimately to Jesus Christ; that in its
comparatively independent substance, in its
dignity, it function and its purpose, it should
serve the Person and the Work of Jesus Christ
and therefore the justification of the sinner.
The State can of course become ' 'demonic, ' ' and
the New Testament makes no attempt to conceal
the fact that at all times th£ Church may, and
actually does, have to deal with the "demonic"
State. From this point of view the State
becomes "demonic" not so much by an un-
warrantable assumption of autonomy — as is often
assumed — as by the loss of its legitimate, relative
independence, as by a renunciation of its true

30 CHURCH AND STATE

substance, dignity, function and purpose, a re-
nunciation which works out in Caesar- worship,
the myth of the State and the like. We should
add that, in the view of the New Testament, in
no circumstances can this "demonic" State
finally achieve what it desires; with gnashing
of teeth it will have to serve where it wants to
dominate; it will have to build where it
wishes to destroy; it will have to testify to
God's justice where it wishes to display the
injustice of men.

On the other hand, it is not inevitable that
the State should become a "demonic" force
(23), In the New Testament it is not sug-
gested that by its very nature, as it were, the
State will be compelled, sooner or later, to play
the part of the Beast "out of the abyss."
Why should this be inevitable, since it too has
been created in Christ, through Him and for
Him, and since even to it the manifold wisdom
of God i3 t proclaimed by the Church? It
could not itself become a Church, but from its
very origin, in its concrete encounter with
Christ and His Church, it could administer
justice and protect the law (in accordance with

CHURCH AND STATE 3 I

its substance, dignity, function and purpose,
and in so doing remaining true to itself instead
of losing itself!) In so doing, voluntarily or
involuntarily, very indirectly yet none the less
certainly, it would be granting the gospel of
justification a free and assured course. In the
light of the New Testament doctrine of angels
it is impossible to ignore the fact that the State
may also manifest its neutral attitude towards
Truth, by rendering to the Church, as a true
and just State, that service which lies in its
power to render; by granting it its true and
lawful freedom, "that we may lead a quiet and
peaceable life in all godliness and honesty* '
(i Tim. ii. 2). If, even when it has become
an unjust State and a persecutor of the Church,
it cannot escape the real subordination in which
it exists, yet in the same real subordination it
may also show its true fac* as a just State (in
practice that may well mean at least a part of
its true face) as, indeed, it appears to have
manifested it to a great extent in all that
concerns Paul, according to the Acts of the
Apostles (24).

Thus there is clearly no cause for the Church

32 CHURCH AND STATE

to act as though it lived, in relation to the
State, in a night in which all cats are grey.
It is much more a question of continual de-
cisions, and therefore of distinctions between
one State and another, between the State of
yesterday and the State of to-day. According to
i Corinthians xii. 10 the Church receives,
among other gifts, that of ''discerning of
spirits.' ' If by these "spirits" we are to
understand the angelic powers, then they have a
most significant political relevance in preaching,
in teaching, and in pastoral work.

One decisive result of this exegesis as a
whole should be a clear understanding of the
meaning of Romans 13. The God from Whom
all this concrete authority comes, by Whom all
powers that be are ordained (v. 1), Whose
ordinance every man resists who resists
that power (v. 2), *Whose Sia/coi/os it is (v. 4)
and Whose XeiTovpyoC its representatives are
(v. 6) — this God cannot be understood apart
from the Person and the Work of Christ ; He
cannot be understood in a general way as Creator
and Ruler, as was done in the expositions of the
Reformers, andalso by the more recent expositors

CHURCH AND STATE 33

up to and including Dehn and Schlier. When
the New Testament speaks of the State
we are, fundamentally, in the Christological
sphere; we are on a lower level than when it
speaks of the Church, yet, in true accordance
with its statements on the Church, we are in
the same unique Christological sphere. It is
not sufficient to state (25-) that the vrrb deov
sweeps away all hypotheses which suggest that
the origin of the State is in nature, in fate, in
history, or in a social contract of some kind,
or in the nature of society, and the like; this
too is why it is not sufficient to state that the
foundation of the State reminds it of its
limits. The phrase viro 6eov does mean this,
it is true, but it must be added that in thus
stating this foundation and limitation of the
State, Paul is not thinking of some general
conception of God, in the <#ir, so to speak, but
he is indicating Him in Whom all the angelic
powers have their foundation and their limits,
the "image of the invisible God" Who as such
is also "the firstborn of all creation' ' (Col. i.

We need only see that for Paul, within
the compass of this centre and therefore within

34 CHURCH AND STATE

the Christological sphere (although outside the
sphere characterized by the word "justifica-
tion") there was embodied in the angelic world
another secondary Christological sphere — if I
may put it so — uniting the Church with the
Cosmos, wherein the necessity and the reality
of the establishment and administration of
human justice was clearly important above all
else — thus we need only see this in order to
note that in Romans xiii. the Name of God is
used in a very clear way, and not in any vague
manner. The establishment and the function
of the State, and, above all, the Christian's
attitude towards it, will then lose a certain
accidental character which was peculiar to the
older form of exposition. We shall then not
have to relate to God, as distinct from Jesus
Christ, the grounds for the attitude required
by i Peter ii. 13, 4 'for the Lord's sake" (26);
just as in the use of similar formulae in the
epistles to the Colossians and the Ephesians,
according to the specific witness of Colossians
iii. 24 and Ephesians v. 20; vi. 6, no other
' 'Lord' 5 is meant than Jesus Christ. ' 'Sub-
mitting yourselves one to another in the fear of

CHURCH AND STATE 3£

Christ" (Eph. v. 21, R.V.). It is the fear of
Christ — that is, the sense of indebtedness to
Him as the Lord of all created lords (Col. iv. 1 ;
Eph. vi. 9) which would be dishonoured by an
attitude of hostility, and it is the fear of Christ
which clearly, according to 1 Peter ii. i3f.,
forms the foundation for the imperative: "Sub-
mit yourselves ... to the King." And we
shall have to think in the same direction when
in Romans xiii. 5 it is claimed of the same
submission that it should occur not merely
through anxiety before the wrath of authority,
but for conscience* sake. HvvetSyjo-Ls (con-
science) means "to know with." With whom
can man know something? The New Testa-
ment makes this quite clear. Schlatter has
translated the crvveih-qai^ 0eov of 1 Peter ii.
19 as "certainty of God." It is clear that
in 1 Corinthians x. 25-27,* where the formula
used in Romans xiii. 5 also appears, it does not
indicate a norm imposed upon mankind in
general but one imposed on the Christian in
particular — and that from the recognition of
that norm implies that he must adopt a definite
attitude. Christian knowledge, Christian cer-

36 CHURCH AND STATE

tainty, and the Christian conscience do not
demand that Christians should enquire in the
shambles or at the feast about the origin of the
meat that is set before them (i Cor. x.).
But the Christian conscience does demand that
they should submit to authority (Rom. xiii.J.
Clearly this is because in this authority we are
dealing indirectly, but in reality, with the
authority of Jesus Christ.

in

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STATE FOR THE
CHURCH

IN order to throw light upon the contrast
between Church and State emphasis has
always, rightly, been laid on the fact that the
State (iroXtTevfjia) or the city (voXis) of
Christians should not be sought in the c 'present
age' 5 but in that " which is to come"; not on
earth but in heaven. That is, in an impressive
way, the theme of Philippians iii. 2 o ; Hebrews xi.
io, 13-16; xii. 22; xiii. 14. And in Revela-
tion xxi. this city of the Christians is surveyed
and presented, with its walk, gates, streets and
foundations: "The holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down from God out of heaven, pre-
pared as a bride adorned for her husband* *
(v. 2). In this city there is, strikingly, .no
temple: "For the Lord God the Almighty, and

the Lamb, are the temple thereof" (v. 22).

37

38 CHURCH AND STATE

That is why it is said: "The nations shall walk
in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do
bring their glory and honour into it. And the
gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: (for
there shall be no night there). And they shall
bring the glory and honour of the nations into
it. And there shall in no wise enter into it
anything that defileth, neither whatsoever
worketh abomination or maketh a lie; but
they which are written in the Lamb's book of
life" (v. 24-27). It must here be emphasized,
above all else, that in this future city in which
Christians have their citizenship here and now
(without yet being able to inhabit it), we are
concerned not with an ideal but with a real
State — yes, with the o:dy real State; not with
an imaginary one but with the only one that
truly exists. And it is the fact that Christians
have their citizenship in this, the real State,
that makes them strangers and sojourners within
the State, or within the States of this age and
this world. Yes, if they are "strangers and
pilgrims" here it is because this city constitutes
below their faith and their hope — and not
because they see the imperfections or even the

CHURCH AND STATE 39

perversions of the states of this age and this
world! It is not resentment, but a positive
sentiment, through which in contradistinction
to non- Christians it comes about, that they
have "no continuing city" here (Heb. xiii. 14).
It is because Paul knows that he is "gar-
risoned' ' by the Peace of God which passes all
understanding, that the Pax Romana cannot
impress Paul as an "ultimate 5 ' (27). It is
because "the saints shall judge the world" —
and not because the Corinthian law-courts
were particularly bad — that, according to
1 Corinthians vi. 1-6, Christians must be able,
within certain limits, to renounce their right
to appeal to the law of the State and its courts of
justice.

It is the hope of the new age, which is
dawning in power, that separates the Church
from the State, that is, from the States of this
age and this world. The only question is
whether this same hope does not also in a
peculiar way unite the two. H. Schlier (28),
who rightly answers the question in the affirma-
tive, describes this bond as follows: "Who-
ever considers human life as ordered and

40 CHURCH AND STATE

established in faith, for this world which God
is preparing ... in face of the claims of tiie
actual earthly bonds, and in the claims of the
most exacting of all bonds — that of the State —
will discern in them the will of God, and will
see bonds established by God. In the eschato-
logical knowledge about the actual end of the
world, the present world is proclaimed in its
real and true character as the creation of
God's word." To that I would like to ask
whether the New Testament anywhere shows
any interest in the f 'present world in its real
and true character as the creation of God 5 '
save in so far as it finds it to be grounded,
constituted and restored in Christ? In this
case, when we think of this bond, should we
not do better to look forward, to the coming
age, to Christ? rather than backward — that is,
rather than think iiv the abstract about creation
and the hypothetic divine bonds established by
this creation.

Of one thing in the New Testament there
can be no doubt: namely, that the description
of the order of the new age is that of a political
order. Think of the significant phrase: the

CHURCH AND STATE 41

Kingdom of God, or of Heaven, that it is called
Kingdom of God or Heaven, and remember too
the equally "political" title of the King of this
realm: Messias and Kjtios. And from Revela-
tion xxi. we learn that it is not the real church
(e/c/cX^cria) but the real city (7roAxs) that
truly constitutes the new age. Or, to put it
otherwise, the Church sees its future and its
hope, not in any heavenly image of its own
existence, but in the real heavenly State.
Wherever it believes in, and proclaims here and
now, the justification of the sinner through the
blood of the Lamb, it will see before it, ' ' coming
down out of Heaven from God," the city of
eternal law in which there is no offender and
whose doors need never be closed, but which
also needs no temple, for the same Lamb will
be its temple. And this city will not endure
merely on the ruins of the annihilated glory of
the peoples and the kings of this earth, but the
whole of this earthly glory will be brought into
It, as supplementary tribute. Could the Church
of divine justification hold the human law-
State in higher esteem than when it sees in that
very State, in its heavenly reality, into which

42 CHURCH AND STATE

its terrestrial existence will finally be absorbed,
the final predicate of its own grounds for hop'e?
Deification of the State then becomes impos-
sible, not because there is no divinity of the
State, but because it is the divinity of the
heavenly Jerusalem, and as such cannot belong
to the earthly State. But the opposite of such
deification, which would consist of making the
State a devil, is also impossible. We have no
right to do as Augustine liked to do, and
straightway identify the civitas terrena with the
civitas Cain. Not because its representatives,
office-bearers and citizens can protect it from
becoming the State of Cain, or even of the
devil, but because the heavenly Jerusalem is also
a State, and every State, even the worst and
most perverse, possesses its imperishable destiny
in the fact that it will one day contribute to the
glory of the heavenly Jerusalem, and will
inevitably bring its tribute thither.

From this point of view we can understand
two passages from the Epistle to the Ephesians,
in which the writer — although the word of the
Kingdom of God which is not of this world was
known to him, if not in those actual words, at

CHURCH AND STATE 43

least in reality — has no hesitation in describing
the Church itself (in a connection in which he
is considering its earthly and temporal reality)
as the commonwealth of Israel (Eph. ii. 12) and
later describes its members (in contradistinc-
tion to their past nature as strangers and
foreigners) as fellow-citizens with the saints
(Eph. ii. 19). There is no need to labour the
point that this "politicizing 5 * of the earthly
Church is "from above/* affirmed from the
point of view of the ultimate reality, of the
"last things/* which, however, neither re-
moves nor alters the fact that in this age, and
in relation to the State, the Church is a
"stranger.** But, for that very reason, it is
remarkable that the concepts, so important
for the Christians, of "strangers and foreigners' '
are used to describe those who do not belong
to the Church, and that the concept of the
"rights of citizenship,*' so important for the
ancient State, can become the predicate of the
Church on earth. Here, too, we must ask
whether the objection of the early Christians
to the earthly State, and the consciousness of
being "strangers** within this State, does not
4

44 CHURCH AND STATE

mean essentially that this State has been too
little (and not too much!) of a State for thole
who know of the true State in heaven; or,
again, we might put the question positively,
and ask whether, in view of the basis and
origin of the earthly State these Christians have
not seen, in the Gospel of divine justification,
the infinitely better, the true and only real
source and norm of all human law, even in this
£ 'present age"? The desire or the counsel of
Paul, in i Corinthians vi. 1-6, which so clearly
points to something like legislation within the
Church itself would otherwise be incompre-
hensible.

It is essential that we should arrive at this
point — one might almost say at this prophecy:
that it is the preaching of justification of the
Kingdom of God, which founds, here and now,
the true system of law, the true State. But it is
equally essential that when this prophecy has
been made the Church on earth should not go
beyond its own bounds and endow itself with
the predicates of the heavenly State, setting
itself up in concrete fashion against the earthly
State as the true State, That it could and

CHURCH AND STATE 4£

should do so cannot possibly be the meaning of
Ephesians ii. and i Corinthians vi., because
for the New Testament the heavenly State is
and remains exclusively the heavenly State,
established not by man but by God, which, as
such, is not capable of realization in this age,
not even in the Church. It was from the
point of view of a later age that Clement of
Alexandria (29) extolled the Church guided by
the Logos as unconquered, enslaved by no
arbitrary power, and even identical with the
will of God on earth as in heaven; and again,
later still, Augustine (30) was able to make the
proud statement: "True justice is not to be
found except in that republic, whose founder
and ruler is Christ." It could be no accident
that the writers of the Epistle to the Hebrews
and the First Epistle of Peter neglected to
console the Christians who were so homeless in
this age and in this world by assuring them that
nevertheless they had a home, here and now, in
the Church. It is far more true that they have
here no abiding city, and that the earthly
Church stands over against the earthly State as
a sojourning (irapoLKia) and aot as a State

46 CHURCH AND STATE

within the State, or even as a State above the
State, as was later claimed by the papal Church
of Rome, and widened also by many a fanatical
sect.

There are other conclusions to be drawn
from Ephesians ii. and i Corinthians vi.
This 7rapoiKia, this "establishment among
strangers/' does not wait for the city which is
to come without doing anything. What indeed
does take place in this irapoiKia ? We
might reply, simplifying, but not giving a wrong
turn to the phrase: the preaching of justifica-
tion. It is in this preaching that this "foreign
community" affirms its hope in the city which
is to come: in this preaching, that is, in the
message which proclaims that by grace, and
once for all, God has gathered up sinful man in
the Person of Jesus, that He has made sin and
death His own, and thus that He has not merely
acquitted man, but that for time and for
eternity He has set him free for the enjoyment
of the life which he had lost. What the
TrapoLKia believes is simply the reality oT
this message, and what it hopes for is simply
the unveiling of this reality, which still remains,

CHURCH AND STATE 47

here and now, concealed. We must note that
it? is not man or humanity, but the Lamb, the
Messiah, Jesus, who is the Spouse for whom the
Bride, the heavenly city, is adorned. It is He,
and His Presence, as "the Lamb that hath been
slain," who makes this City what it is, the City
of Eternal Law. It is His law, the rights won
by Jesus Christ in His death and proclaimed in
His Resurrection, which constitute this Eternal
law. (Here we are confronted by a quite
different conception from the Stoic conception
of the "City" to which Clement of Alexan-
dria refers in the passage which we have men-
tioned.) Now this eternal law of Jesus Christ
constitutes precisely the content of the message
of justification, in which, here and now, the
task of the Church consists. The Church
cannot itself effect the disclosure of this
eternal law, neither in its .own members nor
in the world. It cannot anticipate the "Mar-
riage of the Lamb" (Rev. xix. 7). It cannot
will to celebrate it in this "present age" but
"it can and it should proclaim it.

But — here we go a step further — it can and
should proclaim it to the world. It is worth

4» CHURCH AND STATE

noticing that in all those passages in the
Epistles that are directly concerned with our
problem a window is thrown open in this
direction, which, at first sight, seems somewhat
strange. The behaviour towards the State
which they demand from all Christians is
always connected with their behaviour towards
all men. ' 'Render therefore to all their dues.
. . . Owe no man anything but (which you
can only do within the Church) to love one
another" (Rom. xiii. 7, 8). In 1 Timothy ii. 1
we read that they should make "supplications,
prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks for
all men," and in Titus iii. 2, immediately
after the words on those in authority, we read
"be gentle, showing all meekness unto all
men." Finally in 1 Peter ii. 13 we are again
dealing with the "Every ordinance of man,"
and later in v. 17,, going a step further (and
here too in clear distinction to the love of the
brotherhood) "honour all men." What does
this mean? It seems to me, when considered
in connection with 1 Timothy ii. 1-7, that it
clearly means this : Since it is our duty to pray
for all men, so we should pray in particular for

CHURCH AND STATE 49

kings and for all in authority, because it is
only on the condition that such men exist that
we can 4 'lead a quiet and peaceable life in all
godliness and honesty. 5 ' Why is it necessary
that we should be able to lead such a life?
Are we justified (31) in interpolating at this
point the words c< as citizens," and so causing
Christians to pray for the preservation of a sort
of bucolic existence ? The passage quite clearly
goes on to say: "for this (obviously the possi-
bility of our quiet and peaceable life) is good
and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour,
who will have all men to be saved, and to come
unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is
one God, and one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus ; who gave Himself
a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
Whereunto I am ordained a preacher and an
apostle." Thus the quiet; and peaceable life
under the rule of the State, for the sake of
which this passage calls us to pray for statesmen,
is no ideal in itself, just as the existence of the
Church, in contradistinction to all other men,
can be no ideal in itself. It is the preacher
and apostle who stands in need of this quiet and

£0 CHURCH AND STATE

peaceable life, and this apostle, and with him
stand those with whom he here identifies
himself, not in the service of a Universal
Creator and Preserver, but in the service of the
Saviour, God, who will "have all men to be
saved and to come unto the knowledge of the
truth/' who is the one God in the one
Mediator, who gave Himself a ransom for all.
Why does the community need "a quiet and
peaceable life 3 ' ? It needs it because in its own
way, and in its own place, 'it likewise needs
the preacher and apostle for all, and because it
needs freedom in the realm of all men in order
to exercise its function towards all men. But
this freedom can only be guaranteed to it
through the existence of the earthly State which
ordains that all men shall live together in
concord. Is not the argument for submission
to the civil administration of justice given in
i Peter ii. i^f., by the statement that it is the.
will of God that the Christians as those who
are recognized by law as welldoers, "may put
to silence the ignorance of foolish men — as
free and not using their liberty" guaranteed by
the State "for a cloak of maliciousness," but

CHURCH AND STATE £1

will act in this freedom as servants of God?
Skice this freedom of the Church can only be
guaranteed through the existence of the State,
therefore there is no alternative but that the
Church should on its side guarantee the exist-
ence of the State through its prayers. That this
mutual guarantee can and should fundamentally
only be temporary — that is, that by its very
nature it can and should only be exercised in
this age and in this world, that the State can
and should only partially grant or totally deny
the guarantee that the Church demands of it,
that, finally, the Church cannot and should not
require of the State any guarantee as to the
validity or the effectiveness of its gospel — all
this is not the least altered by the fact that the
Church in all earnestness expects this limited
guarantee from the State, nor by the fact that
this guarantee which the Ch,urch requires of the
State is a serious one, and, as such, cannot be
too seriously laid upon the hearts of its mem-
bers. Prayer for the bearers of State authority
belongs to the very essence of its own existence.
It would not be a Church if it were to ignore
this apostolic exhortation. It would then have

£2 CHURCH AND STATE

forgotten that it has to proclaim this promised
justification to all men. »

But we must also understand the demand for
loyalty to the State in the other passages in the
Epistles which deal with this subject in the light
of i Timothy ii., that is, in the light of this
mutual guarantee. In Titus iii. 1-8, astonish-
ingly enough, it is connected with the rebirth
through baptism and the Holy Spirit. But that is
not astonishing if the future heirs of eternal
life, justified, according to v. 7, by the grace of
Jesus Christ, receive all that not for themselves,
but in the Church and as members of the
Church for all men, and thus stand in need of
freedom not for themselves but for the word of
the Church and therefore for human law, and so
have to respect the bearers and representatives
of that law. And when in Romans xiii. 3-4,
and 1 Peter ii. 14 we read that obedience must
be rendered to authority because it is the duty
of authority to reward the good and to punish
the evil, then in the context of both epistles it
seems to me an impossible interpretation to
say that the writers were speaking of "good"
and "evil" in a quite general and neutral sense,

CHURCH AND STATE £3

and that the justice of the State is equally general
and neutral. Why should not the writers have
been making the same use of these concepts as
they did elsewhere, and been demanding that
Christians should do the good work of their
faith, in the performance of which they, in
contradistinction to the evil doers, have in
no sense to fear the power of the State, but
rather to expect its praise? Why, thinking of
the i 'power" that was so clearly granted to
Pilate to crucify or release Jesus, should they
not first of all have pointed Christians to the
better — i.e. the only true — possibility of the
State, the possibility granted to it by the c 'good, s '
i.e. by the Church, to protect the law (or,
in other words, the possibility of a "Con-
cordat"!)? The fact that the State could
actually make use of the other possibility, that
it could actually honour tfie evil and punish
the good, may be quite true, but it cannot alter
its mission, hence it does not affect the
Christian attitude towards the State. Should
the State go so far as to honour evil doers and
to punish the good, if it can be recalled at all
to its mission, and thereby to its own true

£4 CHURCH AND STATE

possibility, it will be due to the Christian
attitude towards it. And even if the State
betrays its divine calling it will nevertheless
be constrained to fulfil its function, to guarantee
the freedom of the Church, even if in a quite
different way! The "honour" that the State
owes to the Church will then consist in the
suffering of the followers of Christ, described in
the First Epistle of Peter: — and the punish-
ment of the evil doers will then consist in the
fact that the glory of this suffering will be with-
held from them. Thus in one way or another,
the State will have to be the servant of divine
justification.

Thus it is clear that in this very close relation
between the existence of the Church and that
of the State, the Church cannot itself become a
State, and the State, on the other hand, cannot
become a Church. , It is true, of course, that
in principle the Church, too, turns to all men ;
but it does so with its message of justification,
and its summons to faith. The Church gathers
its members through free individual decisions,
behind which stands the quite different free
choice of God, and in this age it will never

CHURCH AND STATE

have to reckon with gathering all men within
itself. The Church must have complete con-
fidence in God, who is the God of all men, and
must leave all to Him. But the State has
always assembled within itself all men living
within its boundaries, and it holds them to-
gether, as such, through its order, which is
established and maintained by force. The State
as State knows nothing of the Spirit, nothing of
love, nothing of forgiveness. The State bears
the sword, and at the best, as seen in Romans
xiii., it does not wield it in vain. It too must
leave to God the question of what must be
done for man's welfare in addition to the
administration of the law which is based on
force. The State would be denying its own
existence if it wished to become a Church.
And the Church on its side, for its own sake,
or rather, for the sake of its mission, can never
wish that the State should cease to be the
State. For it can never become a true Church.
If it were insane enough to attempt this it
could only become an idolatrous Church. And,
on the other hand, the Church would be denying
its own existence if it wished to become a

£6 CHURCH AND STATE

State, and to establish law by force, when it
should be preaching justification. It could not
be a true State; it could only be a clerical
State, with a bad conscience on account of its
neglected duty, and incapable, on this foreign
soil, of administering justice to all men, as is
the duty of the State.

But this relation between the Church and the
State does not exclude — but includes — the fact
that the problem of the State, namely, the
problem of law, is raised, and must be answered,
within the sphere of the Church on Earth.
Those phrases in Ephesians ii. are no mere
rhetorical flourishes, but they are concretely
related to the fact that there is and must be
within the Church itself (and here its close
relation to the State asserts itself) something like
(I am here deliberately using an indefinite
phrase) a commonwealth: with its offices and
orders, divisions of labour and forms of com-
munity. This is known as Ecclesiastical Law.
It is well known that Rudolf Sohm regarded
the appearance of ecclesiastical law (which,
according to him, took place only in the second
century) as the great sin of the early Church.

CHURCH AND STATE £J

But the Christian Church of the first century,
as* pictured by Sohm, moved freely by the
Spirit of God, hither and thither, never actually
existed. Now there is one fundamental eccle-
siastical principle which cannot be denied
without at the same time denying the resurrec-
tion of Christ and in so doing the very heart
of the entire New Testament: the authority of
the apostolate. And from the start there
arose from this one principle many others, in
freedom indeed, but in the freedom of the
Word of God, and in no other freedom. The
words of Paul (i Cor. xiv. 33) about the God
who is the author not of confusion but of peace,
and above all the whole argument of 1 Corin-
thians xii.-xiv., are characteristic at this point.
How could the Church expect law from the
State and at the same time exclude law from its
own life? How could it, and how can it, live
out the teaching with which it has been
entrusted and yet, in its own realm, dispense
with law and order, with the order which serves
to protect that teaching? Certainly, in the
primitive Church there was not more than
' 'something like a commonwealth' 5 ; it was

$8 CHURCH AND STATE

certainly never a juridical community employ-
ing the methods of compulsion characteristic of
the State ; and when, later on, it became such
a body it was to its own undoing. Ecclesi-
astical authority is spiritual authority — authority,
that is, which implies the witness of the Holy
Spirit. Does this make it less strict? Is it not
for that very reason the strictest authority of
all? Was there ever a more compelling legal
order than that which we find presupposed in
the letters of the Apostles ?

But the other side of the question, in this
connection, is still more remarkable: this
antagonistic relation between Church and State
does not exclude — on the contrary, it includes
— the fact that the New Testament, if we
examine it closely, in no sense deals with the
order of the State, and the respect that is due
to such an order,- as something which only
affects the life of the Christian community from
without, but to a certain extent (and again I am
deliberately using an indefinite phrase), the
New Testament deals with it as the question of a
kind of annexe and outpost of the Christian
community, erected in the world outside,

CHURCH AND STATE £9

which thus, in a certain sense, is included
Within the ecclesiastical order as such. The
fact that the Church has had to assume a
4 'certain' 1 political character is balanced by
the fact that the Church must recognize, and
honour, a * 'certain" ecclesiastical character in
the State. At all times indeed forms of "State
Church" have always existed, which, in this
respect at least, were not so far removed from
the New Testament picture of things as might
appear at first glance. It should be noted that
the exhortation on the subject of the State in
Romans xiii. cannot possibly, if taken in its
context, be regarded as an exceptional state-
ment dealing with the Law of Nature, because
it is firmly embedded in the midst of a series of
instructions all of which have as their presup-
position and their aim the Christian existence as
such. In the First Epistle to Timothy it
stands at the head of a series of exhortations
dealing with the conduct of men and of women
during worship, and with the office of the
bishop and of the deacon. In the Epistle to
Titus it stands at the end, and in the First
Epistle of Peter at the beginning, of a similar

6o

CHURCH AND STATE

series. The verb "be subject unto/' so charac-
teristic of the imperative of this exhortation
(Rom. xiii. i; Titus iii. i; i Pet. ii. 13), is
not only used in Titus ii. 9 and 1 Peter ii. 18
for the conduct of Christian slaves towards
their masters, but also in Colossians iii. 18,
Ephesians v. 22, Titus ii. 5, and 1 Peter iii.
i, -5- for the conduct of women towards men,
in 1 Peter v. £ for the conduct of the younger
towards the older members of the community,
and in Ephesians v. 21 and 1 Peter v. s for
the conduct of Christians towards one another
within the Church.

How do the "higher powers," the "rulers/'
the king and his governors come into this
society? Does not the fact that they are
within this society clearly show that this is a
specifically Christian exhortation, that the secular
authority and our -attitude to it are to some
extent included in those "orders" in which
Christians have to prove their obedience to
God? and indeed to the God who is revealed
in Jesus Christ? And what shall we say to the
fact that the State ruler in Romans xiii. 4 is
characterized as the minister of God, and the

CHURCH AND STATE 6 1

State officials in Romans xiii. 6 with their
various demands on the public, as Gbd's
ministers? (32). How do they come to receive
this sacred name? It seems to me clear that
they do "to a certain extent'' actually stand
within the sacred order, not — as was later said,
with far too great a servility — as membra
prcecipua, but as ministri extraordinarii ecclesice.

The light which falls from the heavenly
polis upon the earthly ecclesia is reflected in the
light which illuminates the earthly polis from
the earthly ecclesia, through their mutual rela-
tion. If the question of how this mutual
relation can be explained is not actually answered
by 1 Timothy ii. coupled with Revelation xxL,
then a better explanation would have to be
found. But in any case, as such, the pheno-
menon cannot well be denied.

IV

THE SERVICE WHICH THE CHURCH OWES
TO THE STATE

IF we review the New Testament exhortations
to Christians on the subject of their relation
to the State, we are certainly justified in placing
intercession (i Tim. ii.) in a central position,
as being the most intimate of all, and the one
which includes all others. But we must be
careful to see just how all-inclusive this par-
ticular exhortation is. Christians are called
to offer * 'supplications, prayers, intercessions
and thanksgivings" for all men, and in par-
ticular for kings and all who are in positions of
authority. Does the passage actually say less
than this: that the Church has (not as one
incidental function among others, but in the
whole essence of its existence as a Church) to
offer itself to God for all men, and in particular
for the bearers of State power? But this

62

CHURCH AND STATE 63

"offering oneself for" all men means (for that
is the significance of the vrrep) that the
Church is fulfilling, on its side, that worship of
God which men cannot and will not accom-
plish, yet which must be accomplished. This
intercession is necessary because from God
alone can rulers receive and maintain that
power which is so salutary for the Church, and,
for the sake of the preaching of justification, so
indispensable to all men. Far from being the
object of worship, the State and its represen-
tatives need prayer on their behalf In prin-
ciple, and speaking comprehensively, this is the
essential service which the Church owes to the
State. This service includes all others. In so
doing could the Church more clearly remind the
State of its limits? or more clearly remind itself
of its own freedom ? than in thus offering itself
on its behalf? 0

But this service must of course be rendered
without asking whether the corresponding ser-
vice owed by the State to the Church is also
being given, and indeed without inquiring
whether the individual bearers of State power
are worthy of it. How could such inquiry be

64 CHURCH AND STATE

made before rendering a service of this kind?
Clearly the service becomes all the more
necessary the more negative the answer to the
question; just as the nature of justification
comes out still more clearly when we see that
he who is "justified" is evidently a real and
thorough sinner in the sight of God and man.
Thus the more negative the answer to this
question, the more urgently necessary is the
priestly duty laid upon the Church; the most
brutally unjust State cannot lessen the Church's
responsibility for the State; indeed, it can only
increase it.

Our understanding of "Be in subjec-
tion . . ."in Romans xiii. if. and the other
passages, would have been better served if we
had not regarded this particular exhortation in
the abstract, but had considered it in its relation-
ship to this first, primary exhortation. Can this
"subjection," fundamentally, mean anything
other than the practical behaviour on the part
of the members of the Church which corre-
sponds to the priestly attitude of the Church as
such? "Be subject unto" (yTroraacreWal)
does not mean directly and absolutely "to be

CHURCH AND STATE 6£

subject to someone/' but to respect him as his
office demands. We are here dealing with a
subjection that is determined and conditioned
by the framework within which it takes place,
namely, by a definite rages (order). But the
raft? (as in other passages in which the
word occurs) is not set up by the persons
concerned who are to be the objects of respect,
but, according to v. 2, it is based on the ordin-
ance of God. It is on the basis, then, of this
divine ordinance that such respect must be
shown. But in what way can this due respect
be shown to the leaders of the State, unless
Christians behave towards it in the attitude of
mind which always expects the best from it —
expects, that is, that it will grant legal protec-
tion to the free preaching of justification — but
which is also prepared — under certain cir-
cumstances — to carry this*> preaching into prac-
tice by suffering injustice instead of receiving
justice, and thereby acknowledging the State's
power to be, in one way or another, God-given?
If Christians were not to do this, if they were to
oppose this ordinance and thus to refuse the
State authority the respect which is determined

66

CHURCH AND STATE

and limited by divine decree, then, according
to v. 2, they would be opposing the will ojf
God, and their existence within the sphere of
the State would become their condemnation.
If they neither reckoned with this positive
divine claim of the State nor were prepared if
need be to suffer injustice at its hands, then by
that very fact they would belong to those evil
ones who must fear its power, and towards
whom, by the use of its sword and the power
of compulsion that is granted to it, it could only,
openly or secretly ( £ 'power as such is evil") be
the force which executes the divine wrath, the
dread manifestation of the perdition of this
age (vv. 4- s ).

But this respect for the authority of the State
which is demanded in Romans xiii. must not
be separated — in theory or in practice — from
the priestly function «of the Church. It cannot
possibly consist of an attitude of abstract and
absolute elasticity towards the intentions and
undertakings of the State, simply because,
according not only to the Apocalypse, but also
to Paul, the possibility may arise that the power
of the State, on its side, may become guilty of

CHURCH AND STATE 67

opposition to the Lord of lords, to that divine
ordinance to which it owes its power. If
Christians are still to respect the State, even
then, their docility in this instance can only be
passive, and, as such, limited. The c 'subjec-
tion" can in no case mean that the Church and
its members will approve, and wish of their
own free will to further, the claims and under-
takings of the State, if once the State power is
turned not to the protection but to the sup-
pression of the preaching of justification. Even
then Christians will never fail to grant that
which is indispensable to the State power as
guardian of the public law, as an ordained power
— ' 'tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to
whom custom, fear to whom fear, honour to
whom (as representative and bearer of e^ovaia)
honour — even if the State abuses this ££ovcrta 7
and demonstrates its opposition, as a demonic
power, to the Lord of lords. Even then,
according to Matthew xxii. 21, Christians will
render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,
i.e. whatever is his due, not as a good or a bad
Caesar, but simply as Caesar ; the right which is
his, even if he turns that right to wrong. As

68

CHURCH AND STATE

has been shown, it is and remains a God-
established i£;ovcria y and that which we owe
it, even then, must not be withheld. But the
fact also remains, unalterably, that Christians
are to render unto God the things which are
God's; and likewise, that the Church must be
and must remain the Church. Thus the "sub-
jection" required of Christians can not mean
that they accept, and take upon themselves
responsibility for those intentions and under-
takings of the State which directly or indirectly
are aimed against the freedom of preaching.
Of course it must be understood that even then
the "subjection" will not cease. But their
submission, their respect for the power of the
State to which they continue to give what they
owe, will consist in becoming its victims, who,
in their concrete action will not accept any
responsibility, who /cannot inwardly co-operate,
and who as "subjects" will be unable to conceal
the fact, and indeed ought to express- it pub-
licly, in order that the preaching of justification
may be continued under all circumstances.
All this will be done, not against the State, but
as the Church's service Jor the State! Respect

CHURCH AND STATE 69

for the authority of the State is indeed an
annexe to the priestly function of the Church
towards the State. Christians would be neg-
lecting the distinctive service which they can
and must render to the State, were they to
adopt an attitude of unquestioning assent to the
will and action of the State which is directly or
indirectly aimed at the suppression of the free-
dom of the Word of God. For the possibility
of intercession for the State stands or falls with
the freedom of God's Word. Christians would,
in point of fact, become enemies of any State
if, when the State threatens their freedom, they
did not resist, or if they concealed their resist-
ance — although this resistance would be very
calm and dignified. Jesus would, in actual fact,
have been an enemy of the State if He had not
dared, quite calmly, to call King Herod a "fox"
(Luke xiii. 32). If the State has perverted its
God-given authority, it cannot be honoured
better than by this criticism which is due to it in
all circumstances. For this power that has
been perverted what greater service can we
render than that of intercession? Who can
render this service better than the Christian?

70 CHURCH AND STATE

And how could Christians intercede, if, by;
themselves acquiescing in the perversion of the
power of the State, they had become traitors to
their own cause? And where would be their
respect for the State if it involved such betrayal?

Through this discussion of the ' 'subjection"
of Romans xiii. i (in its connection with
i Timothy ii. i) we have gained a fundamental
insight into the nature of the service which the
Church, as the organ of divine justification, owes
to the State, as the organ of human law, which
the State has a right to expect from it, and by
which, if it remains obedient, it can actually
assist the State. We have affirmed that there
is a mutual guarantee between the two realms.
We now ask: what is the guarantee which the
Church has to offer to the State?

After all that we have seen as constituting the
relation between the two realms, the answer
must be given: that apart from the Church,
nowhere is there any fundamental knowledge of
the reasons which make the State legitimate and
necessary. For everywhere else, save in the
Church, the State, and every individual state,
with its concern for human justice, may be

CHURCH AND STATE J I

called in question. From the point of view of
the Church that preaches divine justification to
all men this is impossible. For in the view of
the Church, the authority of the State is
included in the authority of their Lord Jesus
Christ. The Church lives in expectation of the
eternal State, and therefore honours the earthly
State, and constantly expects the best from it:
i.e., that, in its own way amongst ' 'all men," it
will serve the Lord whom the believers already love
as their Saviour. For the sake of the freedom
to preach justification the Church expects that
the State will be a true State, and thus that it
will create and administer justice. But the
Church honours the State even when this
expectation is not fulfilled. It is then defending
the State against the State, and by rendering
unto God the things that are God's, by obeying
God rather than man, through its intercession
it represents the only possibility of restoring the
State and of saving it from ruin. States may
rise and fall, political conceptions may change,
politics as such may interest or may fail to
interest men, but throughout all developments
and all changes one factor remains, as the

J 2 CHURCH AND STATE

preservation and basis of all states — the Christian
Church. What do statesmen and politicians
themselves know of the authorization and the
necessity of their function? Who or what can
give them the assurance that this function of
theirs is not, as such, an illusion, however
seriously they may take it ? And further, what
do those others know, whose responsibility for
the State and its law the statesman alone can
represent, and on whose co-operation they are
finally so dependent! Just as divine justifica-
tion is the continuum of law, so the Church is
the political continuum. And to be this is the
Church's first and fundamental service to the
State. The Church need only be truly
" Church," and it will inevitably render this
service. And the State receives this service,
and secretly lives by it, whether it knows and
gratefully acknowledges it or not, whether it
wishes to receive it or not.

We only seem to be moving in a lower sphere
when, turning again to Romans xiii. s-j, we
note that the Church here demands from her
members, with an insistence elsewhere unparal-
leled, the fulfilment of those duties on the

CHURCH AND STATE 73

performance of which not merely the goodness
or the badness of the State, but its very
existence as a State depends. The fact that the
right to impose rates and taxes belongs to the
State, that its laws and their representatives
should be honoured, as such, with all respect
and reverence, can only be stated unreservedly
and in a binding way from the standpoint of the
divine justification of sinful man, because this
provides the only protection against the sophisms
and excuses of man, who is always so ready to
justify himself and is always secretly trying to
escape from true law. The Church knows that
the State can neither establish nor protect true
human law, <( ius unum et necessarium," that is,
the law of freedom for the preaching of justi-
fication, unless it receives its due from the
Church, whereby alone it can exist as guarantor
of law — that is why the Church demands that
this due should be rendered in all circum-
stances.

We would of course give a great deal to
receive more specific instruction in Romans
xiii. — and elsewhere in the New Testament
— about what is, and what is not to be

74 CHURCH AND STATE

understood by these particular political duties
towards the State which are expected of the
Church. The questions which arise in this con-
nection cannot be answered directly from the New
Testament ; all that we can do is to give replies
which are derived from the consideration of
these passages by carrying the thought further
along the same lines.

Could Romans xiii. 7, for instance, also
mean : * 4 an oath to whom an oath' ' ? Does the
rendering of an oath, if demanded by the State,
belong to those duties that must be fulfilled?
The Reformers, as we know, answered this
question in the affirmative, but on looking at
Matthew v. 3 3 If., we could wish that they had
given a little more thought to the matter. So
much, at least, is certain, even if the question is
answered in the affirmative, that an oath to the
State cannot be giveu (with true respect for the
State!) if it is a 4 'totalitarian" oath (that is, if
it is rendered to a name which actually claims
Divine functions). Such an oath would indeed
imply that those who swear it place themselves
at the disposition of a power which threatens
the freedom of the Word of God ; for Christians,

CHURCH AND STATE J £

therefore, this would mean the betrayal of
the Church and of its Lord.

Again, is military service one of these self-
evident duties to the State? The Reformers
again answered this question in the affirmative,
and again we could wish that they had done so
with a little more reserve. Because the State
"beareth the sword" (Rom. xiii.) it is clear
that it participates in the murderous nature of
the present age. Yet on this matter, at least
in principle, we cannot come to a conclusion
which differs from that of the Reformers.
Human law needs the guarantee of human force.
Man would not be a sinner in need of justifica-
tion if it were otherwise. The State that is
threatened from within or without by force
needs to be prepared to meet force by force,
if it is to continue to be a state. The Christian
must have very real grounds for distrusting the
State if he is to be entitled to refuse the State
his service, and if the Church as such is to be
entitled and called to say "No" at this point.
A fundamental Christian "No" cannot be given
here, because it would in fact be a fundamental
"No" to the earthly State as such, which is

76 CHURCH AND STATE

impossible from the Christian point of view.
And here I should like to add, in relation to the
question of national defence in Switzerland in
particular, that here, too, there can for us be no
practical refusal of military service. We may
have grave misgivings about the way in which
the Swiss State seeks to be a just state, but, all
the same, we cannot maintain that it confronts
the Church like "the Beast out of the abyss"
of Revelation xiii. But this may and should
be said of more than one other State to-day,
against which it is worth while to defend our
own legal administration. And since this is the
case, from the Christian point of view we are
right in seeking to defend our frontiers; and
if the State in Switzerland takes steps to organize
this security (it is not inconceivable that the
Church should give its support to the State in
this matter) we cannot close our eyes to the
question of how far the Church in Switzerland
should stand in all surety behind the State (33).

It is quite another question whether the
State has any right to try to strengthen its
authority by making any kind of inward claim
upon its subjects and its citizens; that is,'

CHURCH AND STATE 77

whether it has any right to demand from them a
particular philosophy of life (Weltanschauung),
or- at least sentiments and reactions dominated
by a particular view imposed by the State from
without. According to the New Testament,
the only answer to this question is an unhesi-
tating 4 'No! 5 ' Claims of this kind can in no
way be inferred from Romans xiii. ; they have
no legal justification whatsoever. On the con-
trary, here we are very near the menace of the
4 'Beast out of the abyss" ; a just State will not
require to make such claims. From Romans
xiii. it is quite clear that love is not one of the
duties which we owe to the State. When the
State begins to claim "love" it is in process of
becoming a Church, the Church of a false God,
and thus an unjust State. The just State
requires, not love, but, a simple, resolute, and
responsible attitude on the"part of its citizens.
It is this attitude which the Church, based on
justification, commends to its members.

Far more difficult, because far more funda-
mental, is another apparent gap in the teaching
of the New Testament. It lies in the fact that
the New Testament seems to speak concretely

78 CHURCH AND STATE

only of a purely authoritative State, and so tp
speak of Christians only as subjects, not as
citizens who, in their own persons, bear some
responsibility for the State. But it is to be
hoped that the fulfilment of our political duty is
not exhausted by the payment of taxes and other
such passive forms of legality. For us the
fulfilment of political duty means rather respon-
sible choice of authority, responsible decision
about the validity of laws, responsible care for
their maintenance, in a word, political action,
which may and must also mean political struggle.
If the Church were not to guarantee the modern
State the fulfilment of such duties, what would
it have to offer the "democratic" State?
Here, too, we must ask: are we following a
legitimate line of expansion of the thought of
Romans xiii. ? It may seem audacious to answer
that question in th£ affirmative, yet it must be
firmly answered in the affirmative. Everything
here depends on whether we are justified in this
connection in taking the "be subject unto" of
Romans xiii. together with the exhortation to
intercession in i Timothy ii. If the prayer of
Christians for the State constitutes the norm of

CHURCH AND STATE 79

their ' "subjection," which would only be an
u annexe" of the priestly function of the
Church, and if this prayer is taken seriously as the
responsible intercession of the Christians for the
State, then the scheme of purely passive sub-
jection which apparently — but only apparently
— governs the thought of Romans xiii., is
broken. Then the serious question arises: is
it an accident that in the course of time c 'demo-
cratic" States have come into being, States,
that is, which are based upon the responsible
activity of their citizens? (34)

Can serious prayer, in the long run, continue
without the corresponding work? Can we ask
God for something which we are not at the
same moment determined and prepared to bring
about, so far as it lies within the bounds of our
possibility? Can we pray that the State shall
preserve us, and that it* may> continue to do so as
a just State, or that it will again become a just
State, and not at the same time pledge our-
selves personally, both in thought and action,
in order that this may happen, without sharing
the earnest desire of the Scottish Confession (35-)
and saying, with it: Ci Vitce bonorum adesse,

80 CHURCH AND STATE

tyrranidem opprimere, ab inflrmioribus vim im-
proborum defendere," thus without, in certain
cases, like Zwingli (36), reckoning with the
possibility of revolution, the possibility, accord-
ing to his strong expression, that we may have
to 1 'overthrow with God" those rulers who do
not follow the lines laid down by Christ?
Can we give the State that respect which is its
due without making its business our own, with
all the consequences that this implies? When
I consider the deepest and most central content
of the New Testament exhortation, I should say
that we are justified, from the point of view of
exegesis, in regarding the "democratic con-
ception of the State" as a justifiable expansion
of the thought of the New Testament. This
does not mean that the separation between
justification and justice, between Church and
State, the fact that Christians are "foreigners"
in the sphere of the State, has been abolished.
On the contrary, the resolute intention of the
teaching of the New Testament is brought out
still more plainly when it is clear that Christians
must not only endure the earthly State, but that
they must will it, and that they cannot will it as

CHURCH AND STATE 8 1

a "Pilate" State, but as a just State; when it is
seen that there is no outward escape from the
political sphere ; when it is seen that Christians,
while they remain within the Church and are
wholly committed to the future "city," are
equally committed to responsibility for the
earthly "city," called to work and (it may be)
to struggle, as well as to pray, for it ; in short,
when each one of them is responsible for the
character of the State as a just State. And the
democratic State might as well recognize that
it can expect no truer or more complete ful-
filment of duty than that of the citizens of the
realm that is so foreign to it as a State — the
Church founded on divine justification.

There is one last point to be discussed con-
cerning the guarantee that the Church has to
grant to the State. We remember how the
New Testament exhoHatiqn to a certain extent
culminates in the affirmation that Christians
should render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's by their well-doing. But what does
this mean if by this "well-doing" we under-
stand not a neutral moral goodness, but a life
lived in faith in Jesus Christ, the life of the

82

CHURCH AND STATE

Children of God, the life of the Church as
such? It then means that the essential service^
of the Church to the State simply consists in
maintaining and occupying its own realm as
Church. In so doing it will secure, in the best
possible way, the position of the State, which is
quite different. By proclaiming divine justifi-
cation it will be rendering the best possible
assistance to the establishment and maintenance
of human justice and law. No direct action
that the Church might take (acting partly or
wholly politically, with well-meaning zeal)
could even remotely be compared with the
positive relevance of that action whereby,
without any interference with the sphere of the
State, this Church proclaims the coming King-
dom of Christ, and thereby the gospel of
Justification through faith alone; I mean that
its action consists in trite scriptural preaching,
and teaching , and in the true and scriptural
administration of the sacraments. When it per-
forms this action the Church is, within the
order of creation, the force which founds and
maintains the State. If the State is wise, in the
last resort it will expect and demand from the

CHURCH AND STATE 83

Church nothing other than this, for this includes
'everything that the Church can render to the
State, even all the political obligations of its
members. And we can and may formulate the
matter even more precisely: the guarantee of
the State by the Church is finally accomplished
when the Church claims for itself the guarantee
of the State, i.e. the guarantee of freedom to
proclaim her message. This may sound strange,
but this is the case : all that can be said from the
standpoint of divine justification on the question
(and the questions) of human law is summed up
in this one statement: the Church must have
freedom to proclaim divine justification. The State
will realize its own potentialities, and thus will
be a just State, in proportion as it not merely
positively allows, but actively grants, this free-
dom to the Church; i.e., in proportion as it
honourably and consistency desires to be the
State within whose realm (whether as national
Church or otherwise is a secondary question)
the Church exists which has this freedom as its
right. We know that the earthly State is
neither called, nor able, to establish on earth
the eternal law of the heavenly Jerusalem,

84 CHURCH AND STATE

because no human beings are either called, or
able, to perform that task. But the State is
called to establish human law, and it has the
capacity to do so. We cannot measure what
this law is by any Romantic or Liberalistic idea
of "natural law," but simply by the concrete
law of freedom, which the Church must claim
for its Word, so far as it is the Word of God.
This right of the Church to liberty means the
foundation, the maintenance, the restoration of
everything — certainly of all human law. Wher-
ever this right is recognized, and wherever a
true Church makes the right use of it (and the
free preaching of justification will see to it that
things fall into their true place) there we shall
find a legitimate human authority and an
equally legitimate human independence; tyranny
on the one hand, and anarchy on the other,
Fascism and Bolshevism alike, will b$ de-
throned ; and the true order of human affairs —
the justice, wisdom and peace, equity and care
for human welfare which are necessary to that
true order, will arise. Not as heaven (not
even as a miniature heaven) on earth! No, this
"true order" will only be able to arise upon

CHURCH AND STATE $£

k

this earth and within the present age, but this will
take place really and truly already upon this
e^rth, and in this present age, in this world of
sin and sinners. No eternal Solomon, free
from temptation and without sin, but none the
less a Solomon, an image of Him whose Kingdom
will be a Kingdom of Peace without frontiers
and without end. This is what the Church
has to offer to the State when, on its
side, it desires from the State nothing but
freedom. What more could the State require,
and what could be of greater service to
it than this — to be taken so inexorably
seriously?

We all know the maxim of Frederick the
Great: Suum Cuique. It is a less well-known
fact that it already appears as a definition of
human law, as a summary of the functions of the
just State, in Calvin's* Institutio: ut suum cuique
salvum sit et incolume (37). But — this Cdlwin
did not say, and this we must attempt to dis-
cover and to learn anew : — it depends upon the
justification of sinful man in Jesus Christ, and
thus on the maintenance of this central message
of the Christian Church, that all this should

86

CHURCH AND STATE

become true and valid in every sense, in the
midst of this ''world that passeth away, 5 ' in the'
midst of the great, but temporary contrast
between Church and State, in the period which
the Divine patience has granted us between the
resurrection of Jesus Christ and His return:
Suum cuique.

NOTES

(1) CF. the instructive composition of H. Obendiek: Die Obrigkeit
nach dem Bekenntnis der reformierten Kirche, Munich, 1936.

(2) Inst. IV,, 20, 1.

(3) lb. 20, r, and 29.

(4) lb. 20, 14.

(5) Schlussreden t Art. 3 c.

(6) Matt, xvii., dealing as it does with a Temple tax, does not
really belong here.

(7) The reader will do well to note that in this book one thing
only is attempted: to move along the road of exegesis towards a
better view of the problem " Church and State.*' It would in my
opinion be a great advantage if some were to admit that such an
attempt is necessary.

(8) Theologischc Blatter , i93j t No. j. Since the completion of
this work I have encountered Gerhard Rittel, Das Urteil des neuen
Testaments uber den Staat (Zeitschr. f. Syst. Theol., 14 Jahrg. 1937,
pp. 6$ 1— 680, published in June 1938). It throws no new light on
the subject with which I am concerned. On p. 665 of the essay
we are asked to consider carefully * 1 whether our exegesis is true
exegesis, that is, whether its onty goal is to discover what is given in
the text or whether the writer's own* wishes have — perhaps uncon-
sciously — been introduced. ' ' Now, this is a warning that can always
be heard to advantage. Only we are also entitled to ask for some
restraint in their apostrophizing of others from those who cannot
themselves be certain as to what they must, and what they may not,
say on this subject. On p. 6$ 2, for example, the statements and
the omissions on the subject of the "Fremdstaat" and the "Volks-
staat" may well be as closely related to the "wishes" of the author
as to those of certain "principalities and powers."

(9) In the following passage I have found Calvin's views on the

87

88

CHURCH AND STATE

sub Poatio Pilato of the creed most illuminating. The passage is
actually set in a quite different context.

Pourquoy n'est il diet simplement en un mot qu'il est mort, mah
est parte" de Ponce Pilate, soutsz lequel il a souffert ?

Cela n'est pas seulement pour nous asseurer de la certitude de
I'bistoire; mais aussi pour signifier, que sa mort emporte condemna-
tion.

Comment cela?

II est mort, pour souffrir la peine qui nous estoit deue, et par ce
moyen nous en delivrer. Or pource que nous estions coulpaMes
devant ie jugement de Dieu comme mal-faicteurs: pour representer
nostre personne, il a voulu comparoistre devant le siege d'un iqge
terrien, et estre condamne par la bouche d'iceluy: pour nous
absoudre au throne du Juge celeste.

Neantmoins Pilate le prononce innocent et ainsi il ne le condamne
pas, comme s'il en estoit digne (Mattb. xxvii. 24; Luc. xxiii. 14).

II y a Tun et l'autre. C'est qu'il est iustifie par le temoignage du
iuge, pour monstrer, qu'il ne souffre point pour ses demerites, mais
pour les nostres: et cependant est condamne solennellement par la
sentence d'iceluy mesme, pour denoter, qu'il est vrayment nostre
pleige, recevant la condamnation pour nous afin de nous en acquiter.

C'est bien dit. Car s'il estoit pecheur il ne seroit pas capable de
souffrir fa mort pour les autres: et neantmoins, afin que sa con-
damnation nous soit delivrance, il faut qu'il soit repute entre les
iniques (Jes. liii. 12).

Je Pen tens ainsi.

(Catechisme de l'Eglise de Geneve, 1542. Bekenntnisschriften far
nach Gottes Wort refoimierter Kircheo, Munich, 1937^ Vol. I.,

P-s>.)

(10) << Archontes ,> is the title given in Rom. xiii. 3 to the officials
of the State I

(11) In view of this passage, it seems to me impossible to say, as
does Schlier (Die Beurteilung des Staates im neuen Testament y 1932,
p. 312): "The earthly State cannot possibly pronounce judgment
on this Kingdom and its representatives." It was clearly called to do
so through the synagogue of the old Covenant (and, in the sense in
which the Gospels use the words, it was certainly called to do so
"non sine deo").

CHURCH AND STATE 89

> v

i {12) It is not correct to say that Jesus "fell a victim to a political
charge." (G. Dehn, "Engel und Obrigkeit," Theologische Aufs'dtze,
1536, p. 91.)

'(•J I am indebted to Professor Ernst Wolf of Halle for the follow-
ing: ' 'On Ash Wednesday the Emperor kisses and gives gifts to the
children of his orphanages; later in the procession, in the presence
of the whole people, he enfeoffs or rather burdens the Minister of
Justice with the 'Inkwell of Pilate,' and as he lays it on the neck
of the bowing man he says 'Judge with justice like him." ' A direct
reminder of the scrupulously correct behaviour of Roman justice in
matters pertaining to this mystery did not seem to the successors in
the Imperium Romanum out of place in Holy Week; to Syrians and
Abyssinians the "Landpfleger" and his spouse Procla were almost
holy beings. ("Sir Galahad," Byzanz. Von Kaisern, Engeln und
Eunuchen, 1937, E. P. Tal and Co., Vienna, pp. 87-88.)

(14) G. Dehn, op. cit., pp. 97 and 106.

(is) Adv. o.h. V. 24, 1.

(16) Was H. Schher ("Machte und Gewalten im neuen Testa-
ment," Theologischc Blatter, 292) the first to express this? G. Dehn
was in any case the first to develop the argument to any great extent.

(17) And according to Rom. viii. 39 (ovt€ tls ktigis irepa)
we may not be far from the truth of the matter in describing the
State as an avOpcoTrivr) ktlgls (i p et. ii. 13).

(18) Cf. G. Dehn, op. cit., p. 108.

(19) Cf. H. Schlier, "Vom Antichrist," Thcologische Aufsatze,
1936, p. nof. ♦

(20) I am surprised that G. Dehn (6p. cit., p. 101) maintains the
opposite point of view.

(21) With H. Schlier, Macbte and Gewalten, op. cit., p. 291.

(22) Probably Col. i. 26 may also belong here.

(23) Political events of the last decades have introduced into New
Testament exegesis on this matter a certain pessimism which seems
to me not to be justified by the actual facts of the case. The State
of Rev. xiii. is, as H, Schlier (Die Beurteilung des Staates, op. cit.,
p. 329) rightly maintains, "the borderline of the possible State."

9°

CHURCH AND STATE

(24) Up to the present the koltIx ov ^ Kari^v of 2 Thess^ii.^
6ff. have been taken to indicate that function of the Roman State
which works against the Antichrist. Had this interpretation nttt
been "unfortunately" shattered by O. Cullmann, this passage
would also have to be considered here. (Ic caractere eschaiologique
du devoir nussionaire et de la conscience apostohque de St. Paul. Recherches
theologiques, Strasbourg, 1936, pp. 26-61.)

(2 c) With H. Schlier, Die Beurteilung des Staates, op. cit., p. 323.

(26) With G. Dehn, op. cit., p. 99.

(27) Cf. K. L. Schmidt, op. cit., p. 8.

(28) Die Beurtedung des Staatcs, op. cit., p. 320.

(29) Strom. IV., 171, 2.

(30) De civ. Dei II., 21.

(31) With H. Schlier, Die Beurteilung des Staates, op. cit., p. 32^.

(32) In Rom. xv. 16 and Phil. ii. 2 c Paul describes himself and
his fellow-worker Epaphroditus as Xetrovpyov Irjcrov ^piorov els
ra edvrj; in Heb. i. 2 the name is given to the angels of God and
in Heb. viii. 2 to Christ Himself!

(33) It is obvious that the same is also true of the Church in
Czechoslovakia, in Holland, in Denmark, in Scandinavia, in France
and, above all, in England.

(34) Under this category it is proper to include also such
"monarchies" as those of England and Holland. The assertion that
all forms of government are equally compatible or incompatible wi?
the Gospel is not only outworn but false. It is true that a man m
go to hell in a democracy, and achieve salvation under a mobocrac
or a dictatorship. But it is not true that a Christian can endorse,
desire or seek after a mobocracy or a dictatorship as readily as a
democracy.

( 3 r) Art. 14.

(36) Schlussreden, Art. 42.

(37) Inst. IV., 20, 3. And, as was kindly pointed out to me by
Dr. Arnold Eberhard of Lorrach, there is no doubt that Calvin was
on his side quoting Ulpian and Cicero.